AI is making analytical tools more powerful and more commoditized at the same time. Every firm will soon have access to similar models. What they won't have is the same data to run through them. As the tools standardize, the advantage shifts to whoever has spent decades building a dataset worth pointing them at. In real estate, few have built one as complete as CenterSquare's.

One Platform, Two Vantage Points

For over 30 years, CenterSquare has operated at the intersection of public and private real estate. Our listed and private investment teams sit under one roof, sharing research and exchanging signals as a matter of discipline, not convenience. Neither side could produce this dataset alone. Public markets move pricing in real time, while private markets carry real-time ground-level operating details on rents, leasing, and vacancy. Together, they form a continuous read on where the market is, and where it's going.

That combination only works because both sides turn raw information into structured, comparable data. On the listed side, CenterSquare has built and maintained internally developed company models since 1995, constructed and updated by analysts using direct inputs rather than third-party data. Every REIT in our investible universe runs through the same consistent framework, which is what makes it possible to compare value across companies and across time, and to see when the market is mispricing a name relative to its own history or its peers.

On the private side, a proprietary scoring framework rates every asset considered against a consistent set of factors like location, access, physical characteristics, tenancy, and ESG, creating an objective view and score that is consistent across every analyst. That consistency is what makes pattern recognition possible. A single data point on one property is just an observation; the same criteria applied to thousands of properties, tracked the same way over decades, is what lets a repeatable signal surface that allows us to understand what characteristics actually predict outperformance, and where the next opportunity is likely to show up.

The Signal in Practice

Public REIT returns have consistently led private market (ODCE) multifamily returns by roughly two quarters, giving CenterSquare an early read on where private valuations are headed before those shifts show up in appraisal-based indices. When the Fed cut rates to zero in April 2020, REITs signaled the uptrend first, and CenterSquare moved as a net buyer of multifamily assets while pricing was still attractive in the private markets. REIT returns then surged well ahead of ODCE through 2021, peaking around March 2022 just as the Fed began raising rates – a signal CenterSquare used to shift into net seller mode across private markets, harvesting strong returns and returning capital to investors before the private market's returns turned negative. More recently, REIT returns softened beginning in 2024 as demand stalled and supply persisted; however, the private markets had yet to adjust pricing to reflect these dynamics, prompting CenterSquare to lean into deploying capital in rental housing through preferred equity and mezzanine debt rather than direct equity ownership.

The core benefit is tactical timing: because public markets price in real time while private markets are appraised with a lag, understanding REIT performance gives CenterSquare a forward-looking indicator that turns capital allocation from reactive to anticipatory.

Why This Compounds in the Age of AI